A long long time ago, in January, I finally visited Paris for the first time. Ever since then, I've tried to put my experiences in the French capital into words. But sometimes things are difficult to explain. Especially if you're trying to explain something in your second language. Although I've written blog post upon blog post about my travels, I often feel like I don't get my point across as clearly as I would like. Not unless I share my random thoughts from my trips. Chaotic, honest and sometimes way too personal; They're the only thing that can show you how I truly felt about a destination. I did this for Scotland, Thailand, Belgium, Israel and every other country I've visited and written about in the past two years. Paris will be no different. I had such conflicting thoughts and feelings about the place that this is the only way I can paint you the bigger picture without being overly positive or negative. Ladies and gentlemen, here are my random thoughts about Paris!

Growing up in Europe, I heard a lot of stories about Paris. About how romantic the city is, how the architecture will blow your mind, how lovely the culture is. All those stories fit the cliches perfectly (except for the story about a high school friend running away during a field trip - love that story). But I'm not a fan of cliches. Paris is a lot more than the decor for a perfect and romantic proposal. It's creepy, crowded and sometimes very cold. Most people wouldn't say such things about the French capital, but I like to keep things realistic on this blog. Truth is, there are so many weird and annoying things about staying in Paris that people barely talk about. So I've taken it upon myself to do that. Ready? Let's go.

Free walking tours are among my favorite things on the planet. They are great if you want to see a city on a budget or meet other people who are traveling alone. Especially if you're a broke college student, free walking tours are a life-saver. In a city like Paris, they're the best thing ever because you won't have to worry about missing out on any of the important highlights or getting lost. As you can imagine, I was very happy to find a company called Civitatis that organized free walking tours. I had to make a reservation, which I did, and showed up at the meeting point 15 minutes early.
15 minutes later, the tour was canceled. The tour guide was there, two other tourists were there, I was there, and still the tour was canceled. Why? Because they wouldn't do the tour for only three people. When we complained, we were told we shouldn't complain and be glad that a tour like theirs existed in the first place. We hadn't paid for anything, so why were we complaining? If we wanted, we could join the Spanish tour though. I'd never heard such bullshit before.
Civitatis organizes tours in a bunch of other cities as well. I'm never joining one again.

My hostel in Paris was located right at the foot of Montmartre. Every morning, the Sacré-Coeur was the first thing I saw when I looked out of my dorm room window. So of course, it was the first Parisian landmark I visited. I went there with a Chinese girl I'd met at the hostel, because I was still a bit nervous on my first day in Paris.
Going to the Sacré-Coeur was important to me. I'd read so many books that included scenes set in Montmartre and around the cathedral. However, my visit changed from a dream come true to a scary and intimidating experience soon enough. On the way up, I saw the words "the girls are thieves" in French spraypainted on a wall. Most of the graffiti was warning me for pickpockets. About halfway up the hill, a souvenir seller approached us with some bracelets. When I politely declined to buy one and walked past him, he grabbed me by the arm. I yanked my arm from his grip and walked on as if nothing had happened. On the inside, I was shaking though.
When we reached the top of the hill, the Chinese girl and I just wanted to enjoy the view. Instead, we were swarmed by girls with clipboards who wanted to scam us. We ended up fleeing into the Sacré-Coeur after a while. Our way back wasn't much better. We had to make a lot of detours, because the hostile souvenir sellers were literally standing shoulder to shoulder to block stairways and paths.
I loved Montmartre, I loved the Sacré-Coeur, but I didn't feel safe at all.


I love museums. Deep down inside, I'm a bit of a history buff. I also like to include a bit of historical background to my blog posts, and learning about the places I visit is much more fun when I'm actually there, instead of looking things up online. Naturally, I looked up some interesting museums in Paris and ended up looking forward the most to a visit to the Archeological Crypt, which holds the actual ruins of ancient Paris. I'd read online that I could buy a combination ticket for the Crypt and the Catacombs, but when I wanted to buy one at the Catacombs, the lady behind the counter said she'd never heard of such a ticket. I shrugged and thought she was just a French lady being French, ie fed-up with non-English speaking tourists.
After my walk through the Catacombs, I went to the Archeological Crypt, the entrance of which is on the square in front of the Notre Dame. I walked down the stairs - and was greeted by a piece of A4-paper with the word CLOSED on it. Not knowing what to do, I walked up the stairs again, past the police officers who were now keeping an eye on the staircase while holding enormous rifles. I sat down in the middle of the square. Checked, double checked and triple checked the Crypt's website. It was supposed to be open. It said so everywhere. Except for the sign and the locked doors, which told me the place was definitely CLOSED.

This wasn't the only time I was confronted with closed doors. My first attempt at visiting the Pere-Lachaise cemetery failed because of half an inch of snow on the ground. Which was already melting rapidly when I arrived at the cemetery, but it remained closed for the rest of the day. Other cemeteries were also closed, even when the weather was fine.

I was not surprised that I had to let security check my bag at certain Parisian landmarks. After all, a lot of terrorism-related incidents have taken place in the city over the past couple of years. What did surprise me was the extent of these security measurements. I had to walk through metal detectors multiple times and handed my bag over to security guards on a daily basis. I didn't really mind, because it's for my own safety and the weirdest thing I carry around is an unfinished friendship bracelet. But when my camera bag had to be pulled out of my backpack and triple checked, I couldn't help but roll my eyes.


Let me end this post on a light note: We're going to talk about the metro. From the get-go, my plan was to go everywhere by metro. So upon arrival, I went to buy a ticket for 10 rides, which would be a lot cheaper than individual tickets for every ride. Now where I'm from, we have a ticket system similar to the London Oyster card, but ours works nationwide for all forms of public transport. Before that system was put into place, we had tickets that would last for multiple rides. Based on my experiences back home, what with still being in Europe and all, I thought I'd get a ticket that would expire after ten rides. Instead, the machine gave me 10 slips of paper the size of my little finger and I couldn't help but laugh. For the rest of my stay, I had metro tickets flying around every time I took my jacket off, opened my bag or even moved. I looked like a character in a cartoon and it was hilarious.

Long story short, Paris isn't all it's been made out to be. It isn't all bad either, but sometimes it's better to know what's up ahead. I mean, who wants to scramble around on all fours, trying to find all the metro tickets that the wind blew out of your pocket while you were waiting to cross a busy Parisian street? I'm not a fan of pretending that stuff like this doesn't happen just to keep the idealized version of Paris alive in our imagination. That doesn't help anyone going to Paris for the first time. So I've kept it real today and hope this post will help someone, someday.

My blog went silent in March. I posted once in April. Nothing went live in May and June. The biggest reason for that, as I've in my previous post, was my grandma's passing after four weeks in hospital and three weeks in a hospice. That wasn't the only reason though. There were other, more cheerful reasons, such as completing my first year of university. Making friends who kept me entertained with top-tier memes. But most importantly: I spent a lot of time traveling.

Let's go back to February. After visiting Paris, I chose the Dutch city of Dordrecht for my next destination of the Twelve Cities Challenge. I went there by boat on the first sunny day of the year. and explored the city center. In March, I took the train to The Hague and did the same thing there. We did the things a typical tourist should do: we visited a medieval jail and the Binnenhof, where the Dutch government resides. We were good stereotypical tourists.


I never got around to writing about Dordrecht and The Hague, because I had to survive my third block at university. Once finals were over, I got on a plane to Austria. I spent a full day in Vienna, where I watched the marathon and walked along the banks of the Danube in search of street art. The next day, I took a boat down the Danube to Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia. Bratislava became city number for out of twelve for the Twelve Cities Challenge, as well as the place where I added another scare to the collection on my knees during a mountain biking trip that one-upped my Lao cycling adventure in terms of bizarreness. It was an awesome trip.

Upon return from Slovakia, I unpacked my bag only to pack it again the next day for a trip to Ireland. I was going to meet up with a friend on the Emerald Isle, but things didn't go as expected. I ended up third-wheeling my way to Cork, then found myself in Belfast with two Slovenian girls whom I met on the day that we left for Northern Ireland. The three days I spent in Belfast flew by, filled with good music, bad ideas and endless shouts of "Oh, me wee legs! I need to rest me wee legs!"


I returned home only to rush to the hospital and visit grandma. Traveling was put on the backburner for a while, but I did manage to visit Ella from Ella Was Here in Ghent. We had a Eurovision viewing party in an Airbnb, I hid under a blanket as the results came in and did the "Mezdi dance" after watching too much Ex On The Beach: Double Dutch. City number five was firmly in the pocket after that weekend.

In June, I visited my only true friend from my college days. We spent the day in Breda, where I kept getting distracted by street art in the alleys branching off the main streets. It was a relaxed, fun day that brought me one step closer to completing the Twelve Cities Challenge.

In all those months, I didn't blog about any of these trips. Not even once. You know what that means: This blog is going on a digital trip all over Europe. Buckle up, it's going to be a weird ass ride full of random nonsense and bad ideas. In other words: Your regular Lost in Translation content will be back soon.

My grandma was hospitalized in early April. My family and I weren't too bothered; Grandma had been hospitalized quite often in the years since her younger brother's death, which pushed her into a state of apathy towards life in general. Yet every time she was hospitalized, she looked Death in the eyes and said: "I don't think so. Not today."

While my grandma was recovering from pneumonia, I traveled to Austria. Slovakia. Ireland, Nothern Ireland, Belgium. While I was in Belfast, my parents were called into the hospital to say goodbye to grandma. But once again, grandma looked Death in the eyes and said: "I don't think so. Not today."

May rolled around. I spent a weekend in Ghent with Ella from Ella Was Here. I woke up in the early hours of Saturday morning, thinking there was something wrong with Grandma. My parents didn't call me though, so that night I watched the Eurovision Songfestival with Ella as if nothing serious was going on back home. Australia's song struck a chord with me. Its lyrics were based on the singer's experience with postpartum depression. "It feels like zero gravity". In the weeks that followed, that line would describe my entire emotional state.

My grandma turned 86 on May 19th. She'd been transferred to a hospice three weeks earlier, her health deteriorating every day. I refused to say goodbye to her on her birthday, although grandma had already made up her mind. "You guys have to clean up well today," she told us, "because I won't be here tomorrow."

The next day, my grandma passed away. She passed away in the town where she was born, on her own terms, on the day she had in mind. And we were left behind. I cried in lectures. I missed seminars. I addressed almost 50 envelopes with mourning cards. I arranged the pictures for the funeral. I wrote a eulogy. I did more to organize the funeral than my family had expected. I floated through the days. It did indeed feel like zero gravity.

Time stood still for me, but moved on swiftly for everyone else. I remember standing next to grandma's coffin, more than 80 pairs of eyes on me as I read the eulogy out loud. I remember my nose starting to drip and tears streaming down my face as I told about grandma singing me songs about horses and saying "So!" when she was proud of me. I remember falling sick after the funeral. I remember breaking down from exhaustion.

Three weeks after the funeral, I was far behind on all my university assignments. Once I'd finished those, I finally had time to cry and mourn. It didn't help much. My grandma and I had a strained relationship. She never truly acknowledged my achievements, instead changed the topic to those of my cousins. I never truly tried to connect with her, because she preferred my cousins anyway, I thought.

Almost all of June was spent in my zero gravity state. I was angry. I tried to forgive my grandma for the way she'd treated me, because I know she was a product of her time. But I spent nights crying and asking an empty room why, just why couldn't she tell me that she was proud of me, that she loved me, that I mattered. Why?

I crashed down to earth after handing in my final university assignment. It signaled the end of the ordeal that started in April. So here I am now, not knowing how to start over again, where to go, or how to deal with all the unresolved issues that grandma left me with. I guess, as always, that this just means I'll continue posting on my blog to escape life. I guess, for now, that that'll do.